Sunday, 13 May 2018

Happy Mothers' Day - the Dreams and Nightmares Edition

Or should that be American Mothers' Day? In Kenya, we celebrate both US and UK dates so we get two mothers' days.
Still only one fathers' day though...

I spent the day pretty down.
I had an awful dream where my son "accidentally" murdered someone and then tried to say it wasn't him in spite of the dead body on the couch.
Of course, I believed him. He's an accomplished liar.
Then I had a vision that showed someone's arm, ax in hand, swinging downward...
I knew that arm!
I birthed that arm!

When I confronted him with my evidence he admitted that yes. He'd done it. It was an accident! Inexplicably, his hands were now bloody.
I'm freaking out about paying for legal advice and everything. My hands are shaking. And my son is totally unbothered because mum'll take care of it, right?
I'm trying to call my big sister (she's a lawyer) and my hands are shaking so bad I can't dial.
That's when I wake up.
...To the sudden surety that Jared Padalecki is dead.
I know.
What?

It started like this; yesterday, before I went to sleep I was reading tweets from JIBCON which is a supernatural convention in Rome. Convention goers reported that Jared said he was unwell and were posting pics of him looking a bit bloated and miserable. Jensen and 'em were keeping a close eye, attending what was supposed to be his solo panel, etc...
I wake up from this nightmare and clearly someone has to be dead right? And since Jared was sick the last I heard, my mind latched onto him. Anyway, so I headed straight to Twitter to confirm that there was no announcement of Jared's sudden demise. The first thing I see is a tweet about Jensen Ackles and unicorns...and I am immediately reassured. No way Jensen would be playing with unicorns on stage if Jared was lying dead somewhere...
Ugh. So morbid.
As a result of this less than stellar beginning to my day, I've been living in the cold pit of despair from all the residual feelings. They're a bit difficult to shake off. Kinda like Tay Tay.

When I'm in my feelings like this, I like to analyze why I'm in my feelings. Just like I do for other people. And I thought that maybe my mind is still miserable about the whole 'domestic violence is okay if it's Chris Brown doing it' thing and the implication of my failure as a parent; which resulted in a murder dream. Then it's mother's day and my mother was sick for like a second and then died so clearly my mind just looked for the nearest sick person that I like to project my fears on. Mother's day is never a day that I'm gonna be super happy. But this week has been particularly miserable; what with Becky, my dog, dying suddenly in a way that I could not prevent. It's been triggering.
So I began to think to myself what would be different in my life if my mother had lived? Would I still be a writer? I began writing to combat the deep depression I was dealing with as a result of my mother's death; and the trials and tribulations of single motherhood. If she'd lived, my life would likely have looked very different.
Would I still have started writing?
Or would I be dutifully giving out drugs, "Take one twice a day after meals," bored out of my mind? Or maybe I'd have my own business because for sure she would have supported that idea.
Bottom line is, I like my life the way it is. And it took all that struggle to get here.
Negative emotion and life experience can bury you or it can make you grow. Without it, you might never know who you could be. Just look at Riri.

In any case, writing this has made me feel better so thank you for reading and sharing my redistributed pain. In the spirit of motherhood, I gotta share with you my experience of fast food from a few weeks ago. Remember when I told you I was done putting things in my body that wouldn't make it happy? Well a few days after that, I found an old piece of chicken in my bag. I'd stowed the doggy bag in there a week before and forgotten about it. I regularly use that bag but it was in an outer pocket. There was no smell of rotting meat to alert me that I still had food in my bag. I found it totally by accident. I pulled it out and it had that same fried chicken smell that permeates fast food places. There was no mold. The chicken looked exactly the same as it did on the day I put it in there.
Whatever that was, it wasn't food.
I was so freaked out.
I meant to tell y'all about it as soon as possible but I guess I forgot. Fast food chicken is not food people! Stay away!